


The Snare of the Hunter

by Joyce (Alysswolf)



Series: Absalom [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Competant Villain, Conspiracy, Gen, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:50:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alysswolf/pseuds/Joyce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason begins to craft a plan to draw Mulder into the Project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Snare of the Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> "For among my people there are wicked men who lay snares like a fowler's net and set deadly traps to catch men." Jeremiah 6:26

"No, there's no change." Jason kept his voice low without whispering, barely loud enough to reach the cell phone held tight against his cheek. There was no one within ten feet of him, yet decades of caution kept his voice soft as new-fallen snow.

"His condition?" Jason felt the smoke curling out of the phone in his hand; envisioned his friend wreathed in smoke that hid his purpose and emotions.

"Critical, but stable. He just came out of surgery," he replied calmly. "The doctors seem surprised he survived to reach surgery," Jason allowed a hint of wry exasperation to color his bland tone.

"Then I am in the unusual position of being relieved that your usual skill and efficiency was sadly lacking this evening," the smoker's voice held a chilling mixture of affection and reprimand. Jason's shoulders twitched in an involuntary shudder. In his world, men died at the slightest twitch of the smoker's finger -- or his own, for that matter.

"The devil's luck perhaps?" Jason replied with a touch of irony.

"Perhaps," the smoker's voice echoed the irony. "Remember our bargain. Find his price. Bring him home." Satisfied with the command delivered and confident in its execution, the smoker severed the connection.

Jason sighed. The devil must be chuckling in hell tonight. It was open season on Fox Mulder's soul. Now it was his task to bring the man into hell to sit at the right hand of the devil's own chamberlain. Whoever said it was better to rule in hell than serve in heaven had never felt the bitter bite of damnation.

Well, Mulder was not going anywhere for awhile. From where he stood, Jason could hear the steady whoosh of the respirator as it pumped air into a narrow hole in the base of Mulder's throat, about an inch below the gash that should have ended his life. Jason was not a man who believed in miracles, but Mulder's survival came close to fitting all the descriptions he had ever heard about miracles.

Jason rubbed his face with hands only lately scrubbed clean of Mulder's blood. He was tired. It had been awhile since he had pulled a twenty-four hour shift, but the other pieces that were part of this puzzle that was Fox Mulder would be arriving soon. This was no simple puzzle he faced. The standard inducements held no power over Fox Mulder. Jason needed this quiet time to observe the habits and habitat of his quarry. He needed to consider which pieces could best be used to bring Mulder's soul into his grasp.

I'm getting old, he thought wearily and gave a quiet chuckle that sparkled in his tired gray eyes. He remembered Jonathan commenting that coping with Fox Mulder gave him more gray hairs than thirty years of serving the Project. Then again, Jonathan was trying to protect Mulder, not convert him. Time for the devil to come into his own. Time for Mulder to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Project; past time in fact.

The soft chirping of his cell phone brought Jason out of his reverie. 

"Yes?"

"Her plane has landed. She has been apprised of the situation." His operative's voice was as dead as his soul. Jason despised the man even while acknowledging that he was one of his best men.

"Acknowledged. Continue to follow. Do not, under any circumstances, interfere." Jason's clipped tone left no doubt that any variance from his orders would be extremely detrimental to the operative's continued existence.

"Yes sir." The man's resentment crept through his effort to maintain a neutral tone. Jason nearly laughed at the man's belief that he was being given a grunt's job. Keeping up with Agent Scully was nearly as arduous as trying to keep tabs on Agent Mulder. It might do the agent's ego some good to discover he wasn't quite as good as he thought he was.

"Just do it, Carsten," Jason snapped back in his best 'I am not amused tone'. He sensed the agent's arrogance deflating and felt immeasurably better. There were some rewards to damnation. Now to find a way to persuade the stubborn Fox Mulder of those rewards. 

Watch and learn, Jason reminded himself. A good hunter must learn the ways of his prey before he can ever hope to bring him down. "Tally ho," he breathed softly as he drew the shadows around him and became no more noticeable than the wall. A Grey man blending perfectly into nothingness.

**************

Fox Mulder hung crucified on the mast of a great ship that plowed heedlessly into a raging storm. The wind scoured his flesh and sucked him dry. Pain flowed through his veins instead of blood. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came forth. His silent scream echoed only in the dark caverns of his mind, mocking his pain, reminding him that he was alone.

The sound of the sail behind him buffeted his ears until all he could hear was the rush of air in and out of his seared lungs in time to the slapping of the canvas sails against the wind. His hands were chained at his sides, preventing him from covering his ears. Even his head was pinned against the mast by a spike driven between his eyes. 

This was hell, he concluded. He had become a fucking figurehead on a ship of the damned. Even his laughter, as dry and bitter as the wind which striped the flesh off his bones, burned in his throat. Fire burst from his lips and haloed his face like some damned mockery of heaven's holy fire.

 _Scully_ , he screamed silently. Her spirit had held him, had protected him from the angel of death in the cold slush of the street. Why had she abandoned him? Had she taken his place in death's arms?

Frantic, he twisted and turned in the chains which bound him to the mast. A demon sprang to his chest and began clawing at his throat, tearing open great gouts of fire that poured onto his chest. A great weight pressed him down as the ship rolled over. He felt the cold waters of the sea close over him, taking him down into the heavy darkness. The cold cleansed his mind in the last seconds of thought before the sea consumed him.

Of course, stupid, he chastised himself. He was in hell. Scully didn't belong in hell. Strangely comforted by this thought, Fox Mulder allowed the sea to swallow him. The fire retreated into sullen embers of pain as the cold dark depths of the sea quenched all thought and feeling.

**************

The sound of heels clicking at a fast pace echoed down the hospital corridor. Angry heels or perhaps only worried heels, but heels that stepped out the distance in short authoritative snaps like the crack of bullets. Jason smiled as he straightened up out of his reverie. A diminutive red-haired terrier in a crumpled business suit was barreling down the hallway aiming for Mulder's room with unerring accuracy. Even if one of the nurses had managed to intercept her course to ask or give directions, it was obvious that Special Agent Dana Scully knew exactly where she was going and would brook no interference.

He watched her slow to a stop outside the room. Jason could see her reflection in the large observation window as she silently assessed what damage this latest storm to overtake her partner had done. Her shoulders moved in a long slow sigh. For a split second her face betrayed a weary resignation. Then, with a slight hunch of her shoulders, she resumed an expression of calm assurance in time to the arrival of her companion.

Feeling in a doggish mood, Jason decided that if Dana Scully was a terrier, then this man had to be a mastiff. Broad shoulders, a military bearing that screamed ex-Marine, and a bald head that reflected the light from the overhead panels with a painful glare. Jason had no difficulty recognizing the man from his friend's descriptions. 

So this was the arrogant SOB who dared snatch Mulder from the fate that had been so painstakingly contrived for him. The smoker had waxed profanely eloquent when he realized that Assistant Director Walter Skinner had sprung the trap meant to ensnare Fox Mulder. Two years of careful planning. Two years of gradually pushing Mulder into ever greater dependence on his partner. All the work to bring him to the point where he would freely sell his soul to redeem her life, and this damned petty bureaucrat had deflected Mulder's sacrifice and stepped into the trap himself. Sometimes Jason wondered if Lucifer really paid attention to his field operatives.

Jason wondered why Skinner had interfered. Mulder attracted strange allies. One of the reasons the Project was so interested in him was his ability to pull otherwise sane and rational people into his insane orbit. Like a hungry flame his passion drew less passionate souls ever closer until their souls ignited and they were swept up and away. It was this passion that the smoker fed on, relished until all that mattered was harnessing Mulder's fire to feed the dying fires of his own passion.

Perhaps Skinner believed that a bluff once worked could work again. Jason gave a predatory grin. Well, Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner, hell's newest recruit, would pay for that arrogance with tears of blood until his soul was a withered husk and pride was only a distant memory. His friend was not a man to forgive or forget. Jason was not above issuing a gentle reminder should the fires of memory fail.

"Agent Scully," Skinner began, his gruff voice sounding almost hesitant, as if he did not want to intrude on whatever communion she was having with her unconscious partner. Jason slowed his breathing to better overhear their conversation. He was here to learn, to discover what pearl of great price Mulder would barter his soul for.

"He got too close to something, didn't he, sir?" Her voice was firm, almost angry. Whether her anger was directed at Skinner, at Mulder or even at herself was beyond even Jason's ability to discern.

Jason watched as anger, fear and some other less definable emotion chased themselves across Agent Scully's almost inscrutable face. He noted the exact moment anger fled and her eyes softened in entreaty and prayer.

"Don't you dare ditch me again, partner. Next time will be my turn," she whispered so softly that Skinner standing beside her heard nothing, but the tiny amplifier in Jason's ear betrayed her soft words into the hands of the tempter.

Jason quelled a smile. He knew he was dangerously sympathetic to this woman. They were too similar, even down to the arguments she had with Mulder. Their spy turned ally was still dangerous, as much to them as to Mulder. She was the perilous queen mated with Mulder's erratically dangerous king piece on the chessboard of this dark game they played. Jonathan had been no more immune to her peculiar charisma. It had been Jonathan who first came up with the chess analogy when they realized the mistake they had made in sending her to Mulder. He suspected even the smoker held her in higher regard than he would ever admit. His friend admitted to few mistakes, yet seemed to respect her more because she had eluded all his calculated estimates of her effect on Mulder's work. Jonathan had warned and they had not listened. Realizing his attention was drifting, Jason closed off his memories and returned to the duty at hand.

"....attacked without warning by a single individual. The young boy who called 911 said the man fled when he shouted and began running towards him. That doesn't sound like any of the Smoking Man's agents. Why use a knife? They had a clear shot."

Scully turned angry blue eyes on her superior. Despite his quarrel with the A. D., Jason gave the man high marks for courage. Skinner didn't flinch. 

"Agent Scully," Skinner's tone was brisk and professional with just a hint of a reminder of authority. "The police are treating this as a mugging. I have assigned Agents Akers and Jackson to investigate as well. I'm sure you would agree that they are extremely competent agents?" Skinner's stare dared her to say anything. "Good. There are no indications that this was anything other than a random act of violence."

"Begging to differ, sir, where Mulder is concerned nothing is ever completely random," Scully retorted in biting tones a hair's-breadth away from insubordination.

Skinner looked as if he was having trouble swallowing a retort, but held her eyes until she turned away to return to her silent watchful vigil over her partner. Her stance indicated that she was not, would not, be convinced that this was a simple random act of violence. Jason watched her eyes in the glass and saw guilt. She would not go into her partner until she had burned the image of him lying broken and alone into her mind - a penance of sorts to flagellate herself for the sin of not being there when he needed her. 

"Welcome to the club, Agent Scully," Jason murmured softly. Jonathan's words on the night of his death were acid-etched into his memory. Jonathan had smiled while assuring him that he could handle the transfer perfectly well alone. Jason recalled in bitter clarity his joking response that he was no Sancho Panza to follow Quixote against the windmill, but he'd stop by to pick up the pieces later. The memory of that jest and the death that followed it served as his dark and bitter penance.

"Just in case, Agent Scully, I will assign a guard." Skinner offered this as a peace offering without sounding in the least bit conciliatory. He followed Scully's fixed stare. In turn, Jason watched and knew what they must be thinking. Despite the assurance of the doctor, Agent Mulder was too still. His passion which had flared so bright earlier in the evening, now lay dormant, smothered by the machines which were giving his battered body a chance to survive. The heavy dressing on his throat made it seem as if he had been decapitated.

Jason reflected on the Mulder he had tracked earlier in the evening. The Mulder that he had stalked had been furiously alive, a burning comet that blazed across the placid heavens in furious assault against the shadows that strove to blanket the stars with their lies. Even banked and muted, Mulder's passion could still draw in any who harbored a spark of the same impassioned faith. Jason saw Skinner's eyes grow sad and suspected that he held a deep admiration for his embattled agent who seemed to take a licking and keep on ticking, once again.

Jason watched the pair in silent amusement at how transparent Skinner was. His every glance betrayed his thoughts. Jason translated the silent language stance and gesture. Skinner looked at Agent Scully who was staring intently at her partner. Jason followed the twitch of muscles in Skinner's jaw, the thinning of his mouth into a grim line, and the slight stiffening of his spine and knew that he regretted his deal with the devil. Skinner half raised a hand to touch Scully's shoulder then let it drop. 

_Yes, Mister Assistant Director, you would give your soul, if it didn't already belong to us, to assure her that, yes you believed her. You're too good a soldier not to believe. How many jungles have you fought in? What's this war we're in right now, but a jungle of lies, misdirection and half-truths waged in the shadows._

Jason allowed himself a feral smile as he watched Skinner struggle with his knowledge that this was no random act. There was no evidence to back him up, Jason had made sure of that. If Skinner failed to heed the signs and pushed hard enough, he would receive a cold visit from his master reminding him of his place. His smoking friend had merely to suggest that Agent Scully's health would be best served by an official acceptance of the police report and Skinner would be a problem no longer. 

_Nice doggy. You'll learn to roll over very soon._ Jason looked forward to the lessons. Skinner had much to learn about keeping his place.

"Thank you sir. I'll stay here until the guard arrives," Scully moved to the door. Returning to a neutral professional tone, she continued, "Could you send someone over to Agent Mulder's apartment to check for evidence of a break-in?"

Jason almost saluted. She was good, damn good. The old dragon might have miscalculated - she might be more useful to the Project than just as bait to draw Mulder in. Maybe they should take a greater interest in how the ova they collected were used. Interesting possibilities arranged themselves in scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Definitely worth looking into.

Jason watched as Agent Scully walked into the room and sat down beside the bed. One hand rested on Mulder's left hand and Jason sensed that he would learn nothing new by staying. He would give them their privacy, for now. He was tired and wanted to sleep and mull over the possibilities his evening's gleanings had provided him. Giving a curt nod at Carsten who was doing a bad imitation of a wall, Jason left in A. D. Skinner's retreating shadow.

**************

"Mulder...." Scully began, then hesitated, suddenly uncertain, adrift between what her scientifically logical mind told her and what her soul took on faith alone. Her arms still felt the chill of his body as she held him in the street, defying a dark, winged angel to take him from her. The smell of his blood reeked even to her diminished sense of smell. All this her soul knew and accepted without hesitation, but her mind flailed furiously in counter-attack, refusing to yield ground to such fantasy.

Scully looked down at Mulder's hand, studying with sudden intent interest the long tapered fingers and neatly trimmed nails. She let the warmth of her own hand banish the faint blueness that lingered as a reminder of his body's efforts to preserve the blood in the vital organs while abandoning the extremities.

Coward, she accused herself even as she let her eyes wander over his still form. Mulder lay on the bright side of death, cast back into life like some flotsam rejected by the dark ocean he flirted with so often. It was in these quiet moments that she allowed herself the luxury of savoring the long lean lines of his body, admiring the curve of his muscles while consoling her conscience with the myth that as a doctor she was immune to his physical charms. She always liked to save the face for last. That oddly put together face that should have made him homely and ordinary yet by some divine sense of humor combined the rich full lips with a grand beak of a nose, the dark stubble that hovered like a permanent shadow on his cheeks into a harmonious, even handsome whole.

Now, however, she was slow to follow the lines of his chest upwards. This time there was no firm neck muscles to lead her to his face. Instead, when she resolutely forced her eyes upward, a respirator tube pumped air into his lungs through a hole cut in the base of his throat. Above the surgical tracheotomy lay a thick dressing covering the gash that had severed his windpipe and come within a hair's-breadth of slashing open the carotid artery. He would bear a scar, but he would be alive to heal. Scully breathed a prayer of thanks to a God she sensed had abandoned her (or perhaps the other way around, she conceded truthfully) for Mulder's life.

Her emotions were a tangled skein without beginning or end. She could no longer tell where her anger at Mulder began and her fear for him ended. Mixed up with the fear and the anger was a soul-wrenching relief that he was still alive to bear the brunt of her anger. 

The memory of the dream that brought her home still had its claws around her heart. She had been so sure the dream was just that - a dream, a vivid nightmare allegory of her own dwindling into the shadows of death. Now the nightmare was reality. So close to losing him. Dying alone, in the cold with so much unsaid. 

She was the one dying, not him. She drank life from his passion, clung to his fierce faith that the truth, for both of them, was out there. She clung to the slender faith that he would go on without her, wounded perhaps, but still inextricably bound to his quest. And she would live on in his quest. Without him, she would die. She would continue, for awhile, demanding answers from the silent shadows that had condemned them both, but she did not have the faith left to pursue the trail alone. Without Mulder she had no leverage. Without Mulder, she was merely a discarded pawn in a game that no longer had any meaning. All the shadows had to do was wait in silence as she spent her last days helpless as a becalmed ship. With the passing of her life, she was shedding faith in all but him, leaving behind cast off pieces of her belief in an ordered universe.

"Mulder," she repeated his name. Stronger this time, more assured, calling him back to her. Whatever happened, happened. Past and done with. She was here. Why and how were unimportant. He needed to know, she needed to reassure him, that he was not alone.

**************

Floating deep in the dark heavy sea Mulder listened to the roar of the sea. Voices sang to him. Whalesongs, dreamsongs, songs of the sea from which he was born and to which he returned so often that it was as a second home.

Eons passed drifting, listening to the songs, until a single voice called to him, pulling him out of the song, up towards the light waves that danced on top of the sea. Weightless he let the song pull him upwards until the first sparkle of light touched him and he remembered the pain. 

Let me go back, he pleaded with the voice as he tried to sink back into the sea, twisting away from the light. Arms held him, pulling him up into the light which blinded his sea-dead eyes. Always there was the voice, crying out a single word - a word that held him powerless to do anything but follow it out of his safe haven back into pain and fear.

"Mulder"

That word again. Stronger than his fear. His soul leapt for joy before his mind understood both the word and the voice that summoned him back into life.

Aware now, of pain and self, Mulder struggled to answer. His throat burned in acid and flames as he tried to speak the answer to the word. 

"Shush, Mulder. Don't try to speak. The doctors have numbed your vocal cords so you won't damage them further by trying to speak."

He came awake to the calm, rational voice of his partner. She had not abandoned him. He couldn't focus on exactly what she was saying - something about not talking. Well, considering how much his throat hurt right now, he thought that maybe that was very good advice. His memory was still hazy from the drugs, but he remembered a knife, blood and a desperate struggle to breathe and a young boy's hands stopping his life from draining out in the slush of a Washington street.

Carefully he opened his eyes, almost afraid that the voice was just a torment hell had devised for his eternal entertainment. Scully stood over him, carefully brushing his hair back off his forehead, her eyes so blue he expected to find the sun in them. She smiled, that same sad, joyful smile that greeted him in Alaska.

"Welcome back, partner," she said softly.

Mulder smiled, unaware that Scully saw her own sun in the light green dazzle of his eyes.

Mulder mouthed just one word. A word that meant home, thank-you, and a host of emotions too complex for him to ever limit by any other word.

"Scully."

Scully nodded her understanding of their cryptic tongue and watched as Mulder closed his eyes and relaxed into her guardianship. Time enough later for the anger, the rebellion, the impossible patient to appear. Now there was simply relief shared and the reassurance that the future was still theirs, even if only for a little while.

**************

Smoke drifted in serpentine coils around the smoker. He pondered the smoke for a heartbeat, then carefully exhaled another thread in the web that obscured his thoughts from his erstwhile comrades in the Project. They were fools. Let them pursue their petty little games. He understood the larger Game. Fox would understand as well. He couldn't help but not understand once he was brought into the Game. 

"Soon, very soon, Fox. I promise you will understand everything. Bill was a fool and paid the price, Agamemnon's price." The smoker smiled a grim, tight-lipped smile.

The whisper melted into the smoke and drifted out into the early dawn through the open window into the world of dreams and portents. Across town, Mulder cried out in his dream as Samantha was pulled through his fingers into the light that burned away his memory. A cool touch caressed his face, banishing the evil dream and bringing sleep's benediction to his uneasy soul. 

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank my editors, KL and Meredith without whom I would probably flounder in a sea of words.


End file.
